by Mike Brunel | Apr 30, 2018 | Leadership, Strategy
Sometimes we need a little motivation to get us going; here is a great story about seeking your own motivation.
It was a cold winter’s morning in Austin, Texas when I was dragged along to a keynote speech done by Og Manadio, the famous author of the book “The Greatest Salesman in the World.”
I did not know much about Og but going by the packed audience he must have been famous. Over the next hour I was spellbound, every word he uttered felt like he was talking to me directly as if he knew all my secrets, and all around me people were in tears, he just had this great ability to touch everyone in the audience with his words. I was so moved and began, for the first time in my life, to understand the meaning of purpose.
In the library
I was reminded about this great speech Og gave so many years ago because today I am in the library, looking after my daughter and her two friends who have asked me to take them there to do a project, they are everywhere in the library searching for information, articles, and stories to assist them in their project.
Power of Reading
I was taken back in time to what Og had said during that speech all those years ago, he talked about many of his life lessons.
What he had experienced as a young man, becoming a husband, father and successful businessman to then becoming a 30-year-old bum, his successful life now drowned in alcohol.
One day he found himself leaning up against a pawn shop window deciding if that $30 in his pocket could buy that gun in the window, he could take it back to his miserable hotel room, put the gun to his head and pull the TRIGGER!
Well, it turned out that 30-year-old bum did not buy that gun and take his life, he went instead to the library.
You see in all our years of education Og reminded us, for most of us the one thing we learned at school was to read.
There is a famous quote from Charles Tremendous Jones, that goes something like this;
“You are the same person in 5 years except for two things, the people you meet, and the books you read”
Secrets to Success
Another one of Og’s gems was that when we’re growing up there was never any discussions or lessons about how to be successful, how to set goals, how to handle adversity, how to come back after a failure.
He maintained that there was one place where you could find the masters, the secrets to success, and that was the library.
The masters like W. Clement Stone, Napoleon Hill, Maxwell Maltz, and the modern author’s I know like, Anthony Robbins, Chet Holmes, Tom Hopkins and many more.
The great thing about all of these authors is that they are all sitting on the shelf, waiting for you right now, you just have to go and seek them out, and they are FREE, all you need is a library card.
Mike Brunel started mikebrunel.com after being a successful entrepreneur and founder of NRS Media. He co-founded NRS Media in Wellington, New Zealand, expanded it into a global powerhouse in media sales and training, and was eventually responsible for opening offices in London, Atlanta, Toronto, Sydney, Capetown, and Bogota. His products and services are now sold in 23 countries and in 11 languages generating $350 million annually in sales for his clients. Mike sold the company in 2015 and now spends his time following his passions which include rugby, travel. His promise: “I can find thousands of dollars in your business within minutes – GUARANTEED” TRY M
by Mike Brunel | Apr 26, 2018 | Leadership, Sales
I have sold advertising to small medium and large companies for over 30 years. I started out in sales as a stationary salesperson selling products like exercise books, pencils, notebooks and everything else to do with stationary door to door to magazine and bookshops in Sydney.
Then I went on to selling carpet services in London, door to door, or using “promotional brochures placed in letterboxes and then the following days my job was to follow these up either by door to door or visiting new customers that had called in to make an inquiry.
I learned very quickly that if I was truly going to be successful at selling I had to learn a lot more about this aspect of selling. Face to face.
When I got into direct media selling I learned that what I was selling was actually invisible.
Put another way, selling a service, not a specific product. You see advertising is something that you cannot touch, its air, or space or a gap in a TV programme, or even an advertisement placed on a website or through word or keyword phrases for online.
What I learned from those early days selling traditional media is that learning to sell face to face but then selling my knowledge and expertise.
Building trust is one the key aspects you had to learn when “selling the invisible”, and the only way to do that was to meet your clients “belly to belly as the famous trainer Tom Hopkins describes.
Then later in my career, I learned to sell too many.
Starting NRS Media I discovered a way to sell 12-month advertising programs that generated millions of dollars’ worth of revenue by selling expertise.
I was first introduced to this by my partner at NRS Media Doug Gold. He was launching a brand new media company and he wanted to offer his advertisers the chance to share in the exciting launch of his media company.
He offered advertisers’ a “membership programme where they could purchase advertising time at an extremely good rate, on one condition.
A commitment of 12 months, they had to buy and commit to 12 months by automatic debit into his media company’s bank account.
It was an overnight success. In his first launch of this product, he generated well over 1 million dollars in advertising commitment before he even launched his media company. (Around 5 million in sales in today’s money)
I was consulting media companies at the time and I was exposed to this idea. I then took it, developed a sales system around it and we have gone into generating well over 1 billion dollars in revenue for our media partners worldwide.
It is now a scripted, fully developed presentation model that sells millions of dollars’ worth of advertising every week all over the world.
The attendance rate for these seminars tops 70-80% in their heyday.
The closing rates in the room were and still are as high as 50%.
The real secret is “one to many” while we all have to have the skill to sell face to face, these days this is certainly getting harder to execute, running a FREE seminar on your media company.
Why not try and develop a process for your product. It can now be done so easily through digital. Many companies I know are doing an excellent job in getting out their information “through this one to many processes.
Have fun selling your stuff this week.
Mike Brunel started mikebrunel.com after being a successful entrepreneur and founder of NRS Media. He co-founded NRS Media in Wellington, New Zealand, expanded it into a global powerhouse in media sales and training, and was eventually responsible for opening offices in London, Atlanta, Toronto, Sydney, Capetown, and Bogota. His products and services are now sold in 23 countries and in 11 languages generating $350 million annually in sales for his clients. Mike sold the company in 2015 and now spends his time following his passions which include rugby, travel. His promise: “I can find thousands of dollars in your business within minutes – GUARANTEED” TRY ME
by Mike Brunel | Apr 18, 2018 | Strategy
In 1963 meteorologist Edward Lorenz announced a stunning discovery.
For decades, people had viewed the universe as a large machine in which causes matched effects. “Cause and effect” it is sometimes known as, or “what you reap you sow.”
He discovered The Butterfly Effect; it is the concept of small things having major effects.
My young daughter only asked me last week if I had heard of the butterfly effect, I said it was about cause and effect, she said
“Dad, it’s about a butterfly flapping its wings in Sydney, and creating a hurricane in Atlanta.” Really I said “Yes cause and effect”
Edward Lorenz said that it specifically refers to the idea that if a butterfly flaps its wings in Beijing in March, then, by August, hurricane patterns in the Atlantic will be completely different. Here is an example of this theory:
If the butterfly in Beijing flapped its wings, it would create tiny wind patterns that would affect a passing breeze, which would, in turn, affect local wind patterns, which in turn might turn a storm slightly off course.
Since the storm’s original direction was two degrees more to the south, the storm will no longer hit a particular mountain range and dissipate. Instead, it continues in a different direction and lasts longer than it otherwise might have, which causes more weather events to happen.
I have always maintained that this very thought of making tiny adjustments, creates huge efforts. If you understand this very simple theory, then every idea you read and implement will cause some kind of effect somewhere.
Have a great week selling your stuff.
Mike Brunel started mikebrunel.com after being a successful entrepreneur and founder of NRS Media. He co-founded NRS Media in Wellington, New Zealand, expanded it into a global powerhouse in media sales and training, and was eventually responsible for opening offices in London, Atlanta, Toronto, Sydney, Capetown, and Bogota. His products and services are now sold in 23 countries and in 11 languages generating $350 million annually in sales for his clients. Mike sold the company in 2015 and now spends his time following his passions which include rugby, travel. His promise: “I can find thousands of dollars in your business within minutes – GUARANTEED” TRY ME
by Mike Brunel | Apr 6, 2018 | Sales
Have you heard about Speed Selling?
Speed Selling is a great way to launch a company and I have participated in it several times.
Over the years it has become a lot more sophisticated. My old company, NRS Media, has fine-tuned it to pretty much launch a brand new media company into profit from day one. More on that idea later.
Speed Selling
My first experience with Speed Selling was at a part-time radio station in a small town of 15,000 people. As FM radio developed in my country many potential operators were given temporary licenses to run 90-day radio stations, usually in tourist towns.
The potential bidder who was proposing a full-time license used this temporary 90-day station concept to build creditability and see if a format they used would be accepted by the community. If they did, they were granted a full-time FM license.
How Speed Selling worked
Each salesperson was given a certain “show to sell”. For example the “Top Ten at Ten”, the “American Top 40 with Rick Dees”, sponsorships and any generic type music programme that could be sold off for 90 days.
The trick was there was no price on the programme, just a guideline. The sales rep could not go below the number but could go above, the highest price got the sale, and the sales manager was the final judge.
The competition was run over an hour for each show. Each rep had to go out and cold call, sell the product; get the client to sign an agreement with the time and the price they were prepared to pay.
You then came back to the station to see how you got on.
It was great; speed was the key, because if the price was acceptable to the sales manager, then you got the next one, and off you went with a 15-minute bonus.
The other guys had to sit around for 15 minutes before they could go out and sell the next programme.
It proved very successful and loads of fun. Why don’t you try this idea with your team? Not too hard to do, add in some incentives, a few prizes and you will be amazed how much fun it is.
Other tools to Speed Sell.
One to Many.
This idea built my previous company NRS Media from zero sales to $350 million annually.
It was a seminar based model where business owners were invited to a hotel to hear the latest trends and ideas on advertising. Usually in groups of 15-20 advertisers. At the end of the presentation, every attendee was offered an advertising package- usually a 12-month investment.
On average we could generate $600-$1 million in sales using this model. That was over a week!
I have since sold that company, but still today this type of speed selling works. It’s moved on a little, but can be adapted to any company if you have a product launch that requires speed.
Taking action and speed in selling is very important. Often the one ingredient missing is training, you can’t ignore it.
I wrote all the sales and marketing manuals at NRS Media and perfected the execution, but without our famous Bootcamps, our people would never have had the success they achieved.
I take my hat off to the team that drove those in our business. Training is the one neglected tool that gets you the most sales.
Many companies ignore it because it takes time, but as the saying goes “we could not afford not to do it”
There are a few more speed selling idea, love to share.
As always.
Find a way to sell more of your stuff….
Mike
Mike Brunel started mikebrunel.com after being a successful entrepreneur and founder of NRS Media. He co-founded NRS Media in Wellington, New Zealand, expanded it into a global powerhouse in media sales and training, and was eventually responsible for opening offices in London, Atlanta, Toronto, Sydney, Capetown, and Bogota. His products and services are now sold in 23 countries and in 11 languages generating $350 million annually in sales for his clients. Mike sold the company in 2015 and now spends his time following his passions which include rugby, travel. His promise: “I can find thousands of dollars in your business within minutes – GUARANTEED” TRY ME
